Enthusiasm of students was overwhelming at the country’s largest youth summit ‘Under 25’, in Bangalore. Sticking fast to the dress code of the summit, participants were seen in their ‘not-so-usual’ attires. Famous businessmen, you-tubers, bloggers, chefs, CEOs, entrepreneurs, photographers, stand-up comedians and artists from around the globe came here recently to share their success stories and experiences with youngsters. Games, art spaces, makeshift library, music corner, job enquiries section and food stalls were set up, apart from the talks by popular personalities as part of the two-day festival.
Delivering the keynote address, Jaggi Vasudev, widely referred to as Sadguru touched upon the dilemmas that youth are troubled by today. How does one choose right over wrong? Why a big ‘no’ for intoxication? Why do youth crave for speed? and more on the similar lines were posed to him. Taking questions raised by the assemblage, one by one, Sadguru with his unique sense of humour answered, “the thirst for speed is for attaining efficiency. It should therefore be about competence and not adrenaline rush. Explaining it further he added, “competence takes care of safety and ensures control over the action, whereas speeding up for the sake of getting a hormonal ‘high’ leads to mishaps.”
“Similarly, intoxication is an escape from living life. What would happen if pilots and surgeons came intoxicated?” he asked the crowd wittily.
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Lastly, on the challenges of achieving one’s dreams, he commented, “there is no harm in dreaming, but to dream without action and constantly worry about it is like wanting mangoes without planting a tree. Instead, ‘may something more beautiful than you ever dreamt of come your way’. That’s the best dream that can happen to anyone.” The key to life, he said, was to live in the moment consciously.
Sessions that followed had Anand Ahuja, Founder,
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When Photographer Auditya displayed his work on the second day, the audience could make out his eye for patterns -- colourful lines painted on a bus matched with marks of the flyover over which the bus ran. The pattern of a girl’s blouse resembled the architectural motif of the building in the background. The photographer who initially went on a road journey to explore possibilities of taking up photography as his profession, recommended, “don’t expect people to fund you even before beginning your work. Go and explore the world you want to on your own. The rest will fall in place.”
The panel discussion on mental health, moderated by journalist Faye D’Souza had actor Danish Sait, comedian Sejal Bhat, artist Jovanny Ferreyra and Santosh K. Chaturvedi, Professor, NIMHANS. By revisiting their own phases of depression, Danish and Sejal set the stage for discussion on the tabooed topic. “Advising friends when they are mentally low is not going to work. Instead, convey that they need to consult a doctor in a gentle manner. You need not even use heavily loaded words like ‘mental health’ or ‘psychiatry’. Just make sure they have a support system,” explained Santosh Chaturvedi on what to do when a friend goes through a mental crisis. Jovanny spoke on the manner in which he is connecting people to credible mental health practitioners in Bangalore and in different parts of the world.
Though sessions like ‘Mental health: let’s talk about it’ tried to touch upon topics that youth most often don’t pay attention to, the rest at the summit were designed to gain mere applause from the young audience. On the whole, despite the fact that the line-up of speakers came from varied career backgrounds, variety in terms of perspective was lacking at the summit. Celebrities, businessmen and personalities famous on social media speaking at the summit, in a way, reiterated the contemporary belief that ‘going commercial, gaining attention or becoming famous on the internet is the key to success.’
Youth summits such as this hold the responsibility of providing the creators of tomorrow with broader discourse of things. For instance, when photographers who do big budget ads and projects for giant corporations are called in, what about those who capture ground realities of people/nature without any external assistance? If they too shared space with their counterparts on stage, the audience who were mostly from well-off families, would have had the opportunity to explore newer shores which they rarely come across on the internet. Maybe, the youth would have been touched by their stories.